asp.net not saving my cookies - c#

I know it's probably something simple, but I just can't figure it out. Note that I'm doing this on my own PC, not through a server (localhost) and I've considered that might be the issue, but I see nothing online about it being the case so maybe it's just a thought.
So I am trying to simply get a string and store it into a cookie and then read it later. Here's the lines of code that "saves" the cookie and its information:
HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("userName", someInfo);
Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
lblProof.Text = "Value: " + Request.Cookies["userName"].Value;
If I try this method, it fails. No information is shown on the lblProof. At first, I thought maybe someInfo didn't have anything in it (note it's a string). However, when I set the lblProof.Text to someInfo, it DOES show it. I've tried simply doing
Response.Cookies["userName"].Value = someInfo;
But that didn't work either. So what's causing this thing to not work at all? And yes, I've tried HttpContext.Current.Response and Request.

Related

Reading a cookie that has just been written causes the cookie to be blanked

Okay so this one has me stumped. I have written a function that reads the value of a cookie. The logic is
check Response.Cookies in case it has just been written
otherwise read from Request.Cookies to get the previous value
If the cookie has just been written then all is good, and I get the value. However if the cookie has not been written on this visit - it appears to blank the value of the already store cookie.
What?
Here is the code
Note the write happens in a controller
public static void PersistCookie(string cookieName, string cookieValue, bool persistent)
{
var cookie = new HttpCookie(cookieName, cookieValue)
{
Path = "/",
HttpOnly = true,
};
if (persistent)
cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddMonths(6);
HttpContext.Current.Response.SetCookie(cookie);
}
Note the read happens ina partial view
public static string ReadCookieValue(string cookieName, bool checkResponseFirst)
{
if (checkResponseFirst && HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies[cookieName] != null &&
HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies[cookieName].Value.HasValue())
return HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies[cookieName].Value;
return HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies[cookieName] != null ? HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies[cookieName].Value : "";
}
It almost seems that just by checking if a cookie has a value, it messes things up.
Thoughts?
Okay so after much more searching on the web, a good work colleague cam up with the following
it looks like I have come across a curiosity in .NET.
Check out this article
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/3106/On-The-Care-and-Handling-of-Cookies
If you try to access a cookie that doesn't exist in the Response.Cookies collection, it will be created with an empty string in the Value and an Expires date of 01-Jan-0001 00:00. Strangely, it also creates a matching cookie in the Request.Cookies collection if one doesn't already exist.
So if you look at a cookie in the Response then you are indirectly overwriting the cookie on the client machine with an empty cookie, due to expire when the browser closes
So my problem is solved (or should that be unsolvable). As it turns out I have a workaround using the ViewBag but I am glad I was not going crazy!
Thanks for you help
I am not sure you can set cookies in partial views. When setting the cookie with Response.SetCookie, the information is returned to the browser in the Set-Cookie HTTPHeader field. I don't think partial views can set this value, try inspecting your applications response with Fiddler2, after calling Response.SetCookie.
I usually set my cookies with plain Javascript.

Redirect in MVC does not work as expected

I have the following code:
var redirectIp = string.Format("{0}{1}", Session["CurrentHost"], ip.PathAndQuery);
return new RedirectResult(redirectIp);
When I check the value of redirectIP it gives me:
redirectIp "127.0.0.1:84/Administration/Accounts/ShowSummary?ds=0001" string
However when I step through the code the browser opens and gives me the following:
http://127.0.0.1:84/Administration/Accounts/127.0.0.1:84/Administration/Accounts/ShowSummary?ds=0001
I am totally confused. Anyone have any idea what's happening?
That is how urls, http and browsers work. You forgot the protocol part, so the redirect actually does work as expected, given the url that you are redirecting to.
var redirectIp = string.Format("http://{0}{1}", Session["CurrentHost"], ip.PathAndQuery);
return new RedirectResult(redirectIp);
This will work better for now, but to be able to also cover https, you're better off storing the protocol part in a session variable along with the hostname.

Problem getting access_token after migrating to OAuth 2.0

I have tried migrating my app to the OAuth 2.0 routine. I am having trouble getting the access_token from the cookie set by the JavaScript API. I decode the information in the cookie, but instead of an access_token and the user information I get a code. This seems like a rather weird change.
Is there any workaround for this, because it seems that you can't get your code exchanged to an access_token when you haven't specified a redirect_uri when you acquired the code.
I have considered just taking the access_token from the response in the JavaScript API and storing it in a cookie, but that kinda defeats the whole purpose of the extended security and I wanted to ask if there was a proper way to do it.
Could be that I am doing something wrong though, and if that is the case please tell me :)
EDIT
I am aware that the cookie holds a signed request, but according to the docs that signed request should hold the information I require like access_token and uid, but in my instance it only holds the code. That is basically the part I don't understand.
Turns out that (even though it is not documented) we need to exchange the code for an access_token ourselves. I think this is a total waste since that was the nice thing about the old cookie. It was fast and easy to get the access_token.
Anyway. To get the access_token from the new cookie you need to do the following:
public string ReturnAccessToken()
{
HttpCookie cookie = htc.Request.Cookies[string.Format("fbsr_{0}", facebookAppID)];
string jsoncode = System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetString(FromBase64ForUrlString(cookie.Value.Split(new char[] { '.' })[1]));
JsonData data = JsonMapper.ToObject(jsoncode);
getAccessToken(data["code"].ToJson()
}
private string getAccessToken(string code)
{
//Notice the empty redirect_uri! And the replace on the code we get from the cookie.
string url = string.Format("https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id={0}&redirect_uri={1}&client_secret={2}&code={3}", "YOUR_APP_ID", "", "YOUR_APP_SECRET", code.Replace("\"", ""));
System.Net.HttpWebRequest request = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(url) as System.Net.HttpWebRequest;
System.Net.HttpWebResponse response = null;
using (response = request.GetResponse() as System.Net.HttpWebResponse)
{
System.IO.StreamReader reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
string retVal = reader.ReadToEnd();
return retVal;
}
}
public byte[] FromBase64ForUrlString(string base64ForUrlInput)
{
int padChars = (base64ForUrlInput.Length % 4) == 0 ? 0 : (4 - (base64ForUrlInput.Length % 4));
StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(base64ForUrlInput, base64ForUrlInput.Length + padChars);
result.Append(String.Empty.PadRight(padChars, '='));
result.Replace('-', '+');
result.Replace('_', '/');
return Convert.FromBase64String(result.ToString());
}
This may seem a bit redundant, but I suppose you can store the access_token in a session variable. If you do this and iFrame the your app on Facebook you need to know that it will not work in IE 6, 7 and 8 if the user have set his browser privacy settings to medium. There is a workaround for this, but as it is not a part of this question I will not write it. If people really want it, write a comment and I will show it :)
-----------------------------------EDIT------------------------------------------
When using any of the old IE browsers you can't use cookies or session variables in pages that are Iframed in, like your pages on Facebook. This is a problem that can't really be solved sufficiently in coding. By sufficiently I mean that the solution is not nice. You need to set the p3p-header in your response. You can of course do this in coding for all the pages that you service, but the easiest solution (if you are using a .NET server to host your pages) is to set up a p3p policy for the IIS. A guide for this can be seen in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324013. It shouldn't matter what you write in the p3p policy (if you check Facebooks own you can see that they use "We don't have a p3p policy), the important part is that there stands something. I have had troubles just using random text though, but if you use the text in the example there shouldn't be a problem :)
This took me forever to find out, so I hope someone can use it :D
Unfortunately I don't have the answer directly, but I do have a documentation bug that I filed against facebook in order to try to get the documentation there: http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=20363
I have a similar problem that when I try to decode the signedRequest from the authResponse of FB.login, they payload contains something like:
{"algorithm":"HMAC-SHA256","code":"THE_CODE_HERE","issued_at":1315433244,"user_id":"THE_USER_ID"}
As you stated, the docs do talk about how to turn that code into an access_token. That appears to be in the "Server Side" documentation here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
If you grab the accessToken from FB.login you can get it from the js and cache it, but as you said, that isn't actually signed, and could relatively easily be faked.
And you're right, this doesn't appear to have any of the useful information that's described here: developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/signed_request/ (http removed since I don't have enough reputation points yet to post more than 2 links - sorry)
Perhaps you can vote up my bug? I'll post this link on that bug too.
fbsr_APP_ID cookie is actually a signed_request, check out facebook official docs how do you decode signed request verify signature and get the user information. You can look also at official php SDK source how they get access token from there.
You have to use the code to get the actual access_token.

How to encode the redirect_uri for facebook login

I'm trying to build a login link for facebook and I'm I'm getting errors only in some cases. I'm trying to specify a a querystring parameter in redirect_uri token so that I can redirect them back to a specific area of my site after logging in. Here's what works and what doesn't work.
&redirect_uri=http://mydomain.com/login?returnUrl=returnUrl - works
&redirect_uri=http://mydomain.com/login?returnurl=/return/url -doesn't work
&redirect_uri=http%3a%2f%2fmyagentcheckin.com%2flogin%3freturnUrl%3d%2freturn%2furl -doesn't work
It seems that the / in the querystring are causing it to fail. Facebook returns an error when I try it. Anyone know of a way around this?
Instead of including the returnUrl parameter as part of your redirect_uri value, use the state parameter to store this data.
For instance,
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?type=web_server&client_id={appid}&redirect_uri=http://www.yoursite.com/oauth/handshake&state=/requested/page
I have experienced something similar, especially with multiple redirects as above.
My solution is to put the returnUrl into the user's session (or perhaps a cookie), so I don't have to wrestle with double-encoding. For the redirect_url, just omit the querystring.
Try using this API that put together. It will remove the hassle of this for you.
No url encoding necessary.
Sample Authentication
Imports Branches.FBAPI
...
Dim SI As New SessionInfo("[application_id]","applicaiton_secret")
SI.AuthenticateUser("http://[my url]", New SessionInfo.PermissionsEnum(){SessionInfo.PermissionsEnum.email, SessionInfo.PermissionsEnum.read_stream}))
Read the response from the URL you provided above from that page.
Dim FSR = FS.ReadFacebooAuthResponse
When I tried what you do, I got a redirect callback something like this.
http://mydomain.com/login?returnurl=%2Freturn%2Furl&code=...
And I decode the "returnurl" value.
Then it worked fine for me.

How to Kill A Session or Session ID (ASP.NET/C#)

How can I destroy a session (Session["Name"]) when the user clicks the logout button?
I'm looking through the ASP.NET API Reference on MSDN and it doesn't seem to have much information. It seems rather limited. But I cannot find any other pages for ASP.NET Classes etc.
I have tried:
Session.Abandon(); and
Session.Contents.Remove("Name"); neither of them work. ( I found these in a forum from a Google search)
The Abandon method should work (MSDN):
Session.Abandon();
If you want to remove a specific item from the session use (MSDN):
Session.Remove("YourItem");
EDIT: If you just want to clear a value you can do:
Session["YourItem"] = null;
If you want to clear all keys do:
Session.Clear();
If none of these are working for you then something fishy is going on. I would check to see where you are assigning the value and verify that it is not getting reassigned after you clear the value.
Simple check do:
Session["YourKey"] = "Test"; // creates the key
Session.Remove("YourKey"); // removes the key
bool gone = (Session["YourKey"] == null); // tests that the remove worked
It is also a good idea to instruct the client browser to clear session id cookie value.
Session.Clear();
Session.Abandon();
Response.Cookies["ASP.NET_SessionId"].Value = string.Empty;
Response.Cookies["ASP.NET_SessionId"].Expires = DateTime.Now.AddMonths(-10);
Session.Abandon()
This marks the session as Abandoned, but the session won't actually be Abandoned at that moment, the request has to complete first.
From what I tested:
Session.Abandon(); // Does nothing
Session.Clear(); // Removes the data contained in the session
Example:
001: Session["test"] = "test";
002: Session.Abandon();
003: Print(Session["test"]); // Outputs: "test"
Session.Abandon does only set a boolean flag in the session-object to true. The calling web-server may react to that or not, but there is NO immediate action caused by ASP.
(I checked that myself with the .net-Reflector)
In fact, you can continue working with the old session, by hitting the browser's back button once, and continue browsing across the website normally.
So, to conclude this: Use Session.Clear() and save frustration.
Remark: I've tested this behaviour on the ASP.net development server. The actual IIS may behave differently.
Session.Abandon() this will destroy the data.
Note, this won't necessarily truly remove the session token from a user, and that same session token at a later point might get picked up and created as a new session with the same id because it's deemed to be fair game to be used.
You kill a session like this:
Session.Abandon()
If, however, you just want to empty the session, use:
Session.Clear()
Session.Abandon()
is what you should use. the thing is behind the scenes asp.net will destroy the session but immediately give the user a brand new session on the next page request. So if you're checking to see if the session is gone right after calling abandon it will look like it didn't work.
Session["YourItem"] = "";
Works great in .net razor web pages.
Session.Abandon(); did not work for me either.
The way I had to write it to get it to work was like this. Might work for you too.
HttpContext.Current.Session.Abandon();

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